Blanxart Dominican Republic 72

The aroma was vanilla, leather, cocoa, slightly smoked, roasted. For a Dominican Republic bar it's not something I quite expected, as I've known its cacao to be so fruity. HOWEVER, Hispaniola cacao was once known to be more earthy and robust with tobacco etc.! 

The flavour was as I can only describe as Bruce Bogtrotter's chocolate cake (from Roald Dahl's 'Matilda'). The taste came in layers: a fine cocoa dusting, followed by an intensely rich, dark chocolate creamy ganache, then finally a slightly sweeter moist sponge. Surprisingly the chocolate yielded a clean finish

I know many who are in love with this bar, and it's extremely popular at Cocoa Runners ...

It is interesting how such a pure chocolate flavour comes from this Dominican cacao, especially with such specifics of being grown in "Medina, Provincia de San Cristobal"

There are times when small-scale chocolate makers working with fine cacao wish for solely a *chocolate* flavour, not "raspberry, peaches and leather" - in this case the Chocolate Alchemist will advise you to blend your cocoa beans, as a *chocolate* flavour is not one single molecule, but an amalgamation of many!

However, this 72% Blaxart is not a blend... So, if you're working with one origin and just want that chocolate flavour, could you simply find cacao beans with a *chocolate* flavour? It's possible. But you'd be better off higher-roasting to eliminate those fancy nuanced tasting notes (e.g raspberry, pineapple, hazelnut), aerate to further diminish those nuances and add vanilla. It seems likely that this is how Blanxart achieved such chocolatiness

Overall, this chocolate gifts a warm, rich experience